


Dispatches

by Aliana



Series: Back to Middle-earth Month 2012 [15]
Category: Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Drabble Sequence, F/M, Meta, Romance, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-23
Updated: 2012-03-23
Packaged: 2017-11-02 09:28:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/367503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aliana/pseuds/Aliana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In wartime, love means being able to read between the lines.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dispatches

**Author's Note:**

> March 16  
>  **B2MeM Challenge:** Paper Towns (Book Titles); Monogamy (Relationship)  
>  **Format:** Drabble pair  
>  **Genre:** Romance  
>  **Rating:** General  
>  **Warnings:** Oh, World War I, why can I not stay away from you? (Does this mean I'm writing RPF?)  
>  **Characters:** Edith Tolkien, JRR Tolkien, Aragorn, Arwen  
>  **Pairings:** Edith/JRR, Aragorn/Arwen

**1916**

His letters are thick, the handwriting small. Cities of detail rise from the paper’s bland surface: crowded alleyways of incident, houses struggling against collapse in the shrapnel-rain of daily despair. She imagines him writing in his trench, back braced against an earthen wall fortified with planks.

Strangely, the censor’s pen is what Edith cherishes most. They must write in code, navigating those narrow passageways of sentences, ducking barriers, scaling fences. Together. Perhaps this, more than any courtship-sonnet or love-missive, is a marriage’s written heart: the one-for-one transaction, the private language mirrored only in the hands and eyes of one other.

**3019**

A message: the banner’s fabric is supple but strong. Woven to withstand all wind and weather, and the myriad insults of the battlefield. He imagines her working in quiet rooms, needle and thread glinting in candlelight.

As all standards need be, it’s a public dispatch, proclaiming hope or challenge to all who’d glimpse it above the fray. Yet he knows, too, there’s something precious and private in the pattern of the cloth. In the work of her hands, made solid to him here, are the years of promise. All the things between them that do not need to be spoken.


End file.
